15 things you'll love about Windows 10... and some you might hate

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1. What Windows diehards will love and hate about Windows 10

Windows 10 is here and it is a worthy update from Windows 8 and all that has gone before. Here are 15 things you will love about Windows 10 (and some you might hate).

The buzz of Microsoft's leap to Windows 10 may be growing as the next-gen OS launches, but the big, 640-million-user question remains: If you skipped Windows 8 because the initial two-face kludge left you cold, should you think about upgrading to Windows 10? Or has Microsoft gone down so weird a tiled rabbit hole that you should dig your heels into Window 7 and kiss the new direction good-bye?

I'm not talking about optimal interfaces for contortionist computers or oversize phones. I'm talking about getting real work done with a keyboard and a mouse. Is Windows 10 as goofy as its predecessor? Or does the Technical Preview suggest that Microsoft has righted enough of Windows 8's wrongs to make it a worthwhile PC upgrade? (See also: Microsoft provides privacy dashboard ahead of Windows 10 launch.)

All the predictable beta software caveats apply: We're working with a preview of Windows 10, which will be quite different from the final, shipping version of Windows 10. But the plumbing is in, and there's enough meat to start thinking about your Windows future. Here are the things you will love about Windows 10... and those that you will hate.

2. Things you'll love about Windows 10: The Start Menu, the way we were

You avoided Windows 8 because Microsoft took away the Start menu and replaced it with Metro tiles, right? Smart move. Windows 10 has a Start menu and tiles, but the emphasis is completely different.

Here's a typical Windows 7 Start menu. On the left, at the top, menu items are pinned to the Start menu; below is a more-or-less-most-frequently-used list. The Search box is at the bottom.

Click on the wedges to the right of the menu entries and you get a most-recently-used list, sometimes with a list of functions inside the program.

Fixed links are on the right, pointing to common locations and programs. They can be modified, but only in a rigid way. At the bottom you'll find power options.

Here's the Windows 10 Start menu. An experienced Windows 7 user will immediately identify the menu list on the left as a familiar standby, and no doubt realize that the Metro tiles on the right are vestiges of a long-forgotten civilization. If you don't like the tiles, right-click on each and choose Unpin, and they're gone.

Aside from the cosmetic reworkings -- the power options are at the top, next to the name, for example -- the general layout of the left side should feel comfortable.

What's not so obvious: Very significant changes lurk under that familiar face.

All in all, though, Windows 10 looks to have somewhat righted the Start ship that Windows 8 attempted to sink in favor of Metro.

4. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Navigation changes

In Windows 10, if you want to open your Documents folder, you pick the Documents icon on the left. Hovering over the Documents icon brings up a list of the most frequently visited folders. In Windows 7, if you want to open your Documents Library (there's a difference, which I'll discuss later), you pick the Documents menu item on the right.

Navigation in Windows 10 is also different because choosing File Explorer lands you in Home, a made-up location new to Windows 10. More about that later, too.

Is basic navigation better in Windows 7 or Windows 10? Hard to say. In practice, I found it easy to adapt to the new way, but folks who skipped Windows 8 might balk at the Metro tiles on the right -- until they delete 'em.

Like Windows 8, Windows 10 has much better search options, which can reduce the need to navigate. But that may be a big step for experienced Windows users.

5. Things you'll love about Windows 10: New All Apps list

Windows 7 users generally grow accustomed to the fact that the All Programs list becomes cumbersome after a few years of work. New applications frequently stick a single entry on the All Programs list, and the result is an alphabetised list of programs that are hard to pick through.

If you've ever seen an analogous field of Windows 8 Metro tiles, you're probably still looking for that one right tile.

As the Technical Preview stands in build 9860, all of the Metro apps - there are many - appear as single entries in the All Programs (now All Apps) list. You'll have a lot more offal to wade through.

6. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Pinning apps to Start

Windows 7 users know they can pin a program to the top of the Start menu by right-clicking on the program in the All Programs list and choosing Pin to Start. In Windows 8, if you pin to Start, you get another tile on the Metro Start screen. No wonder you skipped Windows 8.

Pinning to Start in Win10 isn't much better than in Window 8. In Win10, if you right-click on an All Apps program and choose Pin to Start, the program appears as a Metro tile on the right side of the Start menu.

Experienced Windows 7 users will be frustrated/confused that the only way to pin programs to the left-side Start menu is to drag them from Start's left side most-recently-used list.

You might have avoided Win8.1 because the search thing creeped you out. Guess what? It's still an issue in the technical preview build 9860. In Win10, using default settings, running a search on your PC sends the search string to Microsoft, where it can be used to, uh, enhance your shopping experience.

In this example on Win10, I searched for "flugelhorn" using the Start menu's search box. I got back a list of the one Word document on my machine that contains the word "flugelhorn" in its title, along with a full Bing search for "flugelhorn."

Microsoft now knows that I searched my personal PC for the word "flugelhorn." Cue the ads.

Use Windows 10 for a while and you will find yourself searching more, and finding more. 'Ask me anything', says the search field sitting in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen. And it means it. Use a real-world language search and Windows 10 will search itself, your hard drive, any online storage, and the web itself - through Bing. If it is there, Windows 10 will find it, and you don't need to know how to search for things. It just works.

You may have avoided Windows 8 because you heard it didn't support Libraries. No relief there - Windows 10 also makes it hard to find your Libraries (even in Search).

In Windows 7, when you start File Explorer, it opens by default to your list of Libraries, as you can see here. The extensive use of Libraries was one of Windows 7's key selling points. In Windows 8, you have to root around to even see them.

While the concept of Libraries has many salubrious sides, Microsoft found that most people were confused by them. Thus, although Libraries still work in Windows 10 - they'll come across intact if you do an in-place upgrade from Windows 7 - they're buried in Windows 10, exactly as they were in Win8.

In Windows 10, when you open File Explorer, you arrive at Home. The new Home isn't a physical location - it's a made-up accumulation of locations that seem to add another layer of click-through obfuscation to an essentially simple concept. I don't get it.

In Win8 you go to a made-up location called "This PC." I never got that, either. Microsoft may make it easier to set a real location for starting Explorer, but for now it's a mess, no better than Win8.

It could be worse. Explorer could open to OneDrive.

11. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Gadget tiles

Did you skip Windows 8 because it doesn't support gadgets? I use gadgets in Win7 all the time. Microsoft touted them as one of the great new benefits in Windows Vista, then killed them in October 2011, when security leaks got to be too much.

Gadgets are back in Win10, for all intents and purposes, but they work a little differently, and they have a new name: They're Metro tiles.

Win8-style Metro tiles, resized and sitting on the desktop, run rings around Win7 gadgets. In Win8 you couldn't put them on the desktop. In Win10, you can -- although there are still problems making tiles as small as gadgets.

12. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Control Panel

Who could forget the Windows 7 Control Panel?

With its kludge-inspired interface and thousands of settings tucked away in obscure corners, the Control Panel has forced millions of Windows 7 customers to waste tens of millions of hours trying to find their way into the settings of the beast.

If you skipped Windows 8, you missed a very-half-fast attempt at moving the Control Panel over to the Metro side of the fence.

In Win10, the effort still isn't complete, but it's much better than in Win8. On the new Start menu, click the Start button, then PC Settings. You see something like this slide and it's sitting on your desktop. The old Control Panel is there, but it's harder to find. (Hint: right-click on the Start button.) The new PC Settings app has quite a few settings not included in the old Control Panel. Conversely, the old Control Panel has many settings that aren't yet in the new app.

Kick around the Windows 10 PC Settings app for a bit, without looking at the Win7 Control Panel, and try to come up with a list of worthwhile tasks you can do in the old, but can't in the new. I bet you'll be hard-pressed to find even a few.

14. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Improved scaling

You will notice quickly that Windows 10 is coded in super high resolution, which is great on a massive screen, but painful on a smaller display. It's okay, though. Windows 10 scales beautifully. So on our Surface Pro 3 we can increase the size of icons and fonts without it looking bad. Truly an OS for all size of device.

15. Things you'll love about Windows 10: Previous Versions

One of the worst design decisions in Windows 8 was the deprecation, or the complete evisceration, of Windows 7's Previous Versions capability, replaced by the much-maligned Win8 File History, which adds a hard-to-navigate front end to a very simple concept.

If you skipped Win8 because it didn't have a usable alternative to Previous Versions, you may be in luck. At least in the Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860, the Previous Versions tab in Windows Explorer is back. I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to work like the Win7 Previous Versions, but hope (hope!) that's merely beta blues.

16. Things you'll love about Windows 10: It's FREE (sort of)

Remember that Windows 7 is really only Windows Vista but fixed. And the upgrade from Vista to 7 cost a pretty price. For most users, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade. That is a welcome, if necessary, move on Microsoft's part. With Apple offering free updates to its OS X software, and various Linux distros offering a reasonable alternative to businesses, Microsoft needs to be seen as an inexpensive option. And with the pain that Windows 8 caused some users, Microsoft needs to be seen not to be profiting from its own mess. However, the picture isn't entirely clear. Windows 8 Pro users will have to pay to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, for instance. And the cost to businesses upgrading fleets of devices is even less clear. However, free is free, and for most Windows 8 and Windows 7 users, the improvements outlined above will cost nothing. Which can only be a good thing.